Forty Winks
by TheOtherMaddHatter
Summary: Stiles dies, and then he rises again when those who loved him in life cannot let him go. His loyalty and love bind him to the realm of the living, bind him to those who lost him too soon, too early. And grief is a powerful element. It can take and twist even the most gentle of souls into darker images of themselves.


**Guess who just got done with finals and is finally getting some free time to write again? Awwwwww yeah. (School is going well, but it's long and a lot of work, and I'm glad it's break time!) So here, have some sappy, emotionally painful Ghost!Stiles to read in the wake of the new promo for 3B.**

**This story splits from canon at the end of Season 2, before the Alphas capture Erica and Boyd. Everyone's alive and safe, and Gerard's hunters decide to take some revenge for their fallen leader and his dead daughter by taking Stiles. Derek and his Pack never figure out who did it or why, but they can guess when Stiles ends up dead. It's really an accident.**

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_**Forty Winks**_

* * *

Stiles has been dead and gone for what feels like an eternity. His body lies cold and still and hollow, resting six feet beneath the ground in Beacon Hill's Cemetery. It has been for the better part of two weeks now. He's buried next to his Mother in a plot added in distress, as though the sudden loss could be blended in with the other headstones. The Sheriff refused to have it any other way, even after Derek Hale had offered to help pay for a nicer plot closer to the center of the cemetery. (Derek didn't mention it was closer to his own family's few remains, minus Laura, of course. And John Stilinski didn't ask.) Stiles is there now, resting peacefully for the rest of eternity with only the company of bugs and dirt and his Mother's long-dead corpse to keep him company. But he's quiet and calm in death, sleeping gently just below their feet. Derek wants to remember him that way, peaceful and still.

It is not how he died. Not by a long shot, but everyone secretly thinks that that's how Stiles should be thought of. Peaceful and calm and tranquil. Not still, not cold, not scared, no screams unheard in the darkness… just, peaceful. No one wants to remember that he'd just moved from one underground prison to another. So they don't.

Derek cannot imagine anything but the terror Stiles faced as he slowly died alone.

And the fear was evident in every little nook and cranny that Stiles' final residence -not a home, never a home- contained. It the very way it smelled, the heavy odor of terror lingering despite the death days previous. The worn path from him pacing along the far back wall, the small scrabbling marks on all the corners and the heavy iron door standing tall in the center, eating what little light a few small candles can give. The desperate nail marks at it's hinges and non-existent handle catch the fleeting light harshly and they accuse everyone there of betrayal. Those had hurt Derek the most, he thinks, those terrified marks made when Stiles realized that it wasn't within his power to get himself out and back to relative safety. He'd stared at them for nearly an hour before the rest of the Pack had arrived to help him carry Stiles home, to return him to where he belonged, with no one there but Stiles' lifeless shell and his own treacherous thoughts. He'd never seen Stiles so silent and still. He hoped he could one day stop seeing it when he closed his eyes.

To make matters worse, Derek soon learns that he could have prevented it all. Every bad thing that had happened to Stiles down there before he finally succumbed to the elements, could have been avoided if only Derek had realized Stiles was missing sooner. Had noticed that not all was right with his Pack, with this town. But he hadn't, no one had. No one had noticed that Stiles was gone until it was far, far too late. Stiles had died alone and cold in a hole in the ground, without anyone there to comfort him. All alone.

The mingled scent of fear and decay was what lead Derek to Stiles in the end. Not even the thick dirt walls, the depth of the cage, and the heavy iron door enough to trap it completely from his nose. It was just familiar enough to lash against his senses as the wind brought it to him roughly. Sharp and stinging and utterly devastating. The scent of the long-since dead. A scent that has now mixed and muddled with Stiles' own, and has burned its way into Derek's memory forever, right next to the smell of burning familiar flesh and bloodied corpses of loved ones.

Stiles is dead, and yet, Derek continues to see him.

Well, not "see" him, not really. It's like Stiles' memory is echoing or resonating in places he frequented in life, an after-image left from playing a scene over one-to-many times. He's never solid for more than a few seconds at a time, and at first, Derek only sees him how he was in life. Bent over Derek's table in his loft, head tucked down as he thought and planned and schemed, hands tugging at his quickly growing hair. He was only there for a few seconds before he flickered out of focus and disappeared, and for a long while, Derek thought he'd only made it up in his guilty grief. Until it happened again, this time with Stiles standing with a huge smile out front of his apartment door, laughter in his eyes, before Derek had lurched forwards to grab him and he'd vanished. But Derek had clearly heard knocking only moments before. He had.

Slowly, over the next two months, Derek sees him more and more. First in places they often saw one another, then more often in places that Stiles had only been in a few times. Derek's bedroom at the loft, the living-room at his old house in the woods, the parking lot outside the school, and then again in the parking lot outside the police station. Once or twice sitting in his father's cruiser when it's parked downtown or somewhere notable in public. It's like his echo is getting stronger, gaining strength, and Derek knows that it's not just his imagination any longer. For whatever reason, Derek can see the remnants that used to be Stiles, the impressions he'd left upon the world in life, slowly gaining strength as time moves on at a snail's pace. And for most of that time, Derek thinks he is alone in his visions. That only he is subjected to the torment of being able to see Stiles, but not touch him, or have Stiles see him back. Derek believes that he deserves it, and that this is Purgatory. Monsters like him didn't go anywhere else, after all.

Peter shows up at his door in the middle of the night during one of the strongest thunderstorms Derek can remember happening in Beacon Hills, sopping wet and clearly uneased. It is so utterly cliche that Derek can't help but let out a little bark of laughter as he opens the door, scowl settling into place as he glares his Uncle down. But Peter looks grim, strung out and tired in a way that Derek hasn't ever seen, his face near-pale and drawn with large dark circles under his manic eyes. He doesn't say a word as he brushes past Derek, eyes darting around the loft as if he's looking for something… or someone.

It clicks and Derek shudders.

"Where did you see him?" He asks Peter, because the man has no other reason for being here. Not at this hour, not when there's no imminent threat. "Was he at the house? You smell like the woods. Like ash."

Peter whirls on him so fast that he's nothing but a blur, even to Derek's eyes. He's back across the room faster than Derek can track, and his arms are hot bands of steel around Derek's upper arms when he grabs him, claws digging in because he grips so tight. He looks frantic, panicked in a way that not even insanity had approached. He looks haunted. Hunted.

"You've seen him too?" Peter whispers the secret between them like it's precious and fragile and damning. In the beginning, Derek thought it was, too. Until Stiles grew stronger. "You've seen Stiles?"

Derek knows that words can't answer properly, but Peter seems to get the hint, because he lets go of Derek like he's been burnt. Like his very being is been cast into the flames of Hell itself. And considering how often that's happened to him, how often he's actually been set on fire, it's a motion that Derek finds familiar, if not comforting.

"It's not him, not really. Whatever it is, it's just impressions of him, echoes. The after image of his life." Derek explains, eyes sliding to the couch where he'd most recently seen Stiles sitting. Peter follows his line of sight until he's looking at the couch too, his brows furrowed in confusion for half-a-beat until dawning comprehension blooms there. "He can't talk, can't really hear us, I don't think. Because it's not really him."

The "I've tried so many times to talk to him." remains hanging in the air, unsaid.

Peter's eyes are wild.

"But you've seen him?"

"Yes, I have." Derek sighs. "Why don't you sit down before you fall down, and tell me where you saw him? To my knowledge, I've been the only one to see him since…"

"He was on the Hale Property, at the tree line where the back of the house meets the woods. He was standing where… where Laura is buried. He had wolfsbane flowers, Derek. There are fresh blossoms torn up and scattered upon the ground. There are footprints, Derek, where he was standing." Peter pants all this out, torrents of fear lacing his every word as he blows by Derek's own damning confession. "He could see me and I could see him."

Derek blinks before urging Peter to sit down again, and when he does, Derek sits across from him, his elbows resting on his knees, hands clasped tight in front of his face as he fights the urge to tug at his own hair in frustration. Peter is more slumped across the cushions than sitting, and his normally-perfect posture is discarded by the wayside in favor of comforts. Ones he doesn't normally care to take when in the presence of others. He's more creature right now than man, and in these moments, he's almost as dangerous as he is when he's at his best before his death at the Pack's wayward hands. It makes Derek uneasy, on edge, nervous and jumpy. Almost as much as this new revelation that Peter brings does.

Because Stiles, in all this time, has never been able to affect the world around him when he appears. He's only been self-contained, as if in his own lonely world, where Derek is only allowed brief glimpses in. There's never been any changes like what Peter is telling him now. Never any lingering signs of his presence.

Stiles is morphing into something more than just an after-image now.

Something dangerous… powerful.

"You need to tell me exactly what happened, Peter. Don't leave anything out. Don't exaggerate, or manipulate, or leave anything out." Derek says sternly, eyes locking on his Uncle's form, the red bleeding into his irises. "Now tell me everything."

**xXx**

It's not just Derek and Peter seeing Stiles though, not that they realize it. Scott has seen Stiles as well, sometimes just out of the corner of his eye, and sometimes close up. Scott found Stiles sleeping in his bed, once, when he got home from Allison's after a late night of mourning and chemistry. He'd been so startled and fucking heart broken that he'd whined and moaned and scared the figment away. Scott hadn't cried that hard since they'd put Stiles in the ground for the last time. Then he'd scrambled out of his bedroom window that he and Stiles used to crawl in and out of all the time as children and in need of comfort. Ran out into the dark night, fleeing as fast as he could from his memories, even of a happier time. He doesn't come back home for nearly two days, and when he does, his mom doesn't ask where he went or why. She just holds him close and lets him cry on her shoulder.

Scott sees him again standing in the front lobby at Dr. Deaton's clinic, toying with a few packages of dog treats and bells on the cat collars that hang there. He's just standing there, like he's waiting for him, and Scott only distantly hears the tools and things he's been carrying to put away for Deaton clatter loudly to the ground. The world narrows down to a pinprick of sound and rapidly diminishing color, and all he can see is Stiles, standing there like nothing has happened in the past three months, like he isn't dead and gone. Stiles and his too-big smile and his ridiculous hair. His familiar dimples and movements and moles...

It isn't until Dr. Deaton is smacking him hard across the face that Scott realizes he's crumpled on the floor as well, wolfing out and scratching big swathes into the flooring with his claws as he whines and howls out his pain and loss. He has no idea what's happened in the last few minutes, but Dr. Deaton looks startled, terrified even, as he holds onto Scott tightly by his shoulders. Scott just cries and continues to break down, the shift coming and going rapidly, and the pain is little comfort as he struggles to find an end to the rush of emotions he's feeling. It doesn't ever seem to stop, and it's lucky that they're alone in the clinic after hours. There's no way that either he or Deaton could explain away the physical and emotional changes Scott has been shifting through on the floor, away.

Scott isn't in the frame of mind to really try, either.

Deaton sends him home after he's calmed down enough to control the shifts, and tells him not to come in to work tomorrow. Scott can't even argue, and he leaves, but he doesn't go home. He goes to Stiles' house, and as he's crawling through the window -not locked, never locked- he's hit with the solid wall of stale scent from confinement, night air, and the smell of lingering alcohol. The Sheriff is passed out in the bed, the sheets crumpled beneath him, his uniform still partially on, like he couldn't be bothered to take it off before he fell asleep on top of the covers Stiles once used. There are two empty bottles of Jack Daniels lying turned over on their sides on the night table, and Scott can smell John's breath from here. Can smell the booze upon his lingering inhales and exhales, and the tears stained on his face. They're a matching set to Scott's own, and he doesn't even fight fight the whimpers that leave his throat. Everything smells like Stiles still, but that will fade, and soon all he'll have left is the smell of the Sheriff and cheap liquor and Scott can't take it. He spends the night at the preserve, isolated in the woods and alone in his pain.

Scott prays to the moon and whoever else will listen that he never has to see Stiles again. Not like that. Because Scott doesn't think he can make it if this happens a third time. Doesn't think his sanity can withstand the thought of Stiles lingering in their failures so strongly that he'll haunt them all for the rest of their unnatural lives. Scott just can't take it.

**xXx**

The mess in the kitchen is still dripping egg yolks down the cabinet when John Stilinski gets home to find it. The rest of the house is dark, but every light in the kitchen is on and blazing bright. There's open bags of flour that haven't been touched since Stiles' death laying scattered across the countertop, a half-dozen eggs broken and scattered across every surface where they've been dropped. Some noodles are out and in a pan of stone-cold water, as if waiting to be boiled, and there are a variety of vegetables pulled out of the open crisper drawer in the fridge that has clearly been open for a while. The milk is missing, which is good, because John is pretty sure it had gone off over a week ago. But what is less good is the distinct lack of bottles he'd stacked in the corner next to the microwave. All four of the liquor bottles are gone, just missing, not in the trash, not scattered around the livingroom. They're not hidden in Stiles' closet, like they used to be when Stiles was little and they'd both just lost Claire and he'd been drinking more than he should have been. Like he was now. They're just gone, and John can't figure out where they've gone when he sees Stiles standing in the doorway with a sad look on his face.

It hits him like a solid blow, and he feels all the air in the room rush to leave as it is leaving his lungs. His chest aches in a sharp, fierce way, and his eyes are watering dangerously. Because there is Stiles, his Stiles, standing there with such a familiar expression on his face as he continues to watch his father. Not lying dead and still in a coffin not meant for him, face discolored and odd in a way that suggested a closed casket wake, in a way that shouted all of John's many failures as a parent. No, it's alive, and healthy looking, and the corner of his mouth is ticking downwards as it does when Stiles is truly upset or frustrated with something. He's got broken eggs and flour streaked across his face and clothes, and they're the ones that he was found in when Derek Hale brought Stiles out of the woods for the final time, tucked against his chest as if Stiles were the most precious thing in the world. He looks so confused, and that's probably what does it for John, makes him break down and slump to the floor in his kitchen and panic like Stiles used to, because he has seen Stiles scared, seen him confused and hurt and concerned. But he's never seen this brand of pain in his face before, and it's hurting him in a way that he can hardly bear. The panic attack he has is justified.

He's sobbing now and Stiles reaches out towards him, one hand with normal, perfect fingers (not clawed or warped or torn to shreds like they had been after) towards him, and that's when the tears flow freely. It makes Stiles hesitate, stop, and his hands drop as this look of absolute grief flickers across his face. He's gone between one watery blink and the next, and if it weren't for the mess in his kitchen and the missing Jack bottles, John could believe he'd been imagining it. That he'd made the whole thing up so that he didn't have to think, if only for one moment, that his Stiles, his little boy, was dead and gone, and that he was all alone in the world. It only makes him sob harder, and he can't bring himself to clean up anything in the kitchen. It stays that way until the eggs have begun to smell and sour, and the stench is too much for John to take any longer. He throws everything away and doesn't stop to consider where his alcohol has gone, simply buys more and consumes it rapidly.

These bottles don't disappear.

**xXx**

By now, the entirety of the Pack has seen Stiles at least once, sometimes more if they're lucky -or unlucky- and it's starting to wear them all thin. Derek's started seeing Stiles more and more, and just like Peter said, Stiles is starting to interact and influence the world around him when he appears. The flowers on Laura's grave, the front door to the old Hale House, his father's kitchen… Stiles is starting to gain corporal abilities. Starting to gain physical presence. And Stiles is starting to gain strengths he shouldn't have, that the dead shouldn't have. He shouldn't be here anymore. And yet, he is, lingering at the fringes of everyone's sanity like the wraith he's quickly becoming.

Scott's already had a close call with a mental breakdown when he sees Stiles in his kitchen, and he flees into the forest until Derek and Peter find him several hours later, crouched and shoved into an impossibly tight space underneath a fallen tree. Later Peter will tell Derek that it's the clearing where Stiles and Scott used to play as children, and later found the upper half of Laura's body when he'd killed her. Where he bit Scott. Where all of this started. Scott is incoherent and nearly inconsolable, and it takes everything he and Peter has to rouse him from his crying stupor and drag him back to Derek's loft where the rest of the Pack awaits them. He stays wolfed-out for a majority of it, and doesn't shift back for quite some time.

Scott stays with him and Peter for three days, and hardly says a word. The rest of the Pack come and go, but they often stay close together when they're there and able, choosing to lounge and lay in a big pile for comfort. They reassure themselves with physical contact and their own scents as much as possible. Stiles used to call them their Puppy Piles, and Derek doesn't have the heart or the inclination to say anything about them once they start. He and Peter simply join in and bask in the warmth and comfort as much as they are able.

It's not until later that John Stilinski comes to visit them, and interrupts at a time when the entire Pack is around, cuddling together on the floor in front of his large windows at the loft in a mess of limbs. There is a variety of pillows, blankets, and cushions scattered about on top of the mattresses Derek has drug up from somewhere, and Scott has been away from his home for well over a week. John's there looking for Scott at the insistence of Melissa, and that the Sheriff knows Scott's here is particularly telling. Derek doesn't hesitate to let the man in, even with the amount of teens piled in on his front floor.

John's eyes briefly roam over the few visible heads he can see in the mess of blankets and bedding on the floor before they meet Derek's own, and immediately Derek can tell that the Sheriff is suffering just as much as they are, that he gets it. Derek doesn't say a word, but he fetches John a glass of water, because the man smells like stale sweat and cheap liquor, and Stiles would never forgive him if he let his father slip away too. He wordlessly takes it and doesn't ask the obvious question Derek knows he's dying to ask, but sits down heavily onto the couch next to Peter, who is just staring at him with glassy eyes that see someone else perched next to him. Not a word is spoken until John gets up to leave, and he inclines his head towards Derek briefly before murmuring that he'll tell Melissa Scott is safe and that she shouldn't worry. He doesn't ask for Scott to come back with him, and he says nothing of the others in Derek's apartment. Derek can do little more than sigh his gratitude.

None of them see Stiles for almost two weeks.

**xXx**

They're running from a few stray hunters that have gone mad in the wake of Gerard's disappearance and death when it happens. The Pack has been separated and Derek is running blind in the dark after one of them had the bright idea to light off a flash grenade. All he can see is the blinding bright white of light flares as they still hurt his eyes, and his senses are dulled from the bang. It's slow to go away, and in his drive to escape, it's put on the back burner. He's scared and alone, and he gets the distinct impression that he may not be getting out of this alive. When a few of the hunters round the rest of his Pack back around towards him before closing off the only escape he can see, his instincts flare true, and it hurts that they may all be seeing Stiles a lot sooner than they planned on. Derek thinks of Stiles' father, alone to find all their dismembered bodies scattered in the woods, and of Peter, who hasn't been right following the first few sightings he had of Stiles. They'll both be alone, and their strained ties to sanity will surely snap. They'll destroy themselves or one another, of that, Derek is sure.

The hunters are cocking loaded guns that smell strongly of wolfsbane and gunpowder when the entirety of the world around them goes dead silent. The wind stops, the birds go silent, and even the bugs are scarred into unnatural stillness. It puts Derek and the Pack on edge, the hunters even more so, and they all glance around them frantically trying to find the cause.

And that's when Stiles appears.

He looks like an avenging angel, Derek thinks at first, when his vision returns, if angels were real and weren't dark creatures already damned at birth. All fire and pain and sharp wrath that stains the air with black tendrils of emotion. But he shifts then, turns into something else. Stiles looks like had when Derek found him rotting in that cellar, his face bruised, a paling grey that comes with lifelessness and exposure to the cold. There's blood and dirt marring the front of him in a variety of small patches, and if he were to turn around, Derek is sure that the back of his clothes will be stained with the same soot as the floor had. His fingers, where they poke out from beneath his threadbare flannel, are broken and twisted and just as bloody. They hook and stab accusingly when Stiles raises them and points at the hunters, fury written across his face and pain burning in his eyes. His mouth is a jagged, dark mess, where he'd chewed his lips. They crack and bleed when his mouth drops open and a loud screeching noise emits from somewhere deep inside of him. This is not the same Stiles that Derek and the Pack have been seeing since Stiles death. No, this is something born of terror, pain, and vengeance. Something twisted and mangled by grief and suffering.

The hunters all turn pale, and some look near fainting when he turns his full attention to them. He takes one jerky step towards him when a few of the younger ones turn tale and scatter into the woods. They don't get very far when the sound of wet gurgling and splashing makes its way back to Derek's ears, and the solid thumps that follow are a solid indicator of what's happened to them. Of what Stiles has done to them. The older ones, the seasoned hunters, look horrified, but steel themselves for facing this wrathful entity. Stiles turns on them next, and the noises that Derek hears coming from all around him make him glad that he can only faintly see shapes and outlines when they get too far away, when they are drug away, and that he can't see anyone standing behind him and the Pack. They're all tucked in around him, hiding their heads and clutching their ears, as scared as he is at the events going on around him. But Derek cannot hide his eyes, cannot stop seeing what Stiles is becoming… has become. The sounds of cracking bones and tearing flesh and muscles screaming in protest raise high before cutting off. A symphony of agony and death.

Because Stiles, in his loyalty, has transformed into something as dark and twisted as those he helped protect the Pack from, once. A dark spirit, a poltergeist, filled with hate and longing and need. And the revelation of what Stiles has twisted into during his eternal slumber stabs at Derek like a thousand tiny iron blades, taking root in his soul as black hate twists within him. Hatred for himself, because he has helped do this to Stiles. Helped to keep him from his deserved mortal rest by denying his pain. By trying to seek him out instead of seeking to let him go in peace. Let him rest. And look at him now, Derek thinks.

Stiles has become his weapon of regret.


End file.
